Thursday, January 31, 2008

You see a lot of things which are called men, who turn the way the wind blows; a number of preachers that turn north, south, east and west, just according as the times shall dictate and their circumstances and the hope of gain shall drift them. I pray God to send a few men with what the Americans call “grit” in them; men who when they know a thing to be right, will not turn away, or turn aside, or stop, men who will persevere all the more because there are difficulties to meet or foes to encounter; who stand all the more true to their Master because they are opposed; who, the more they are thrust into the fire, the hotter they become, who, just like the bow, the further the string is drawn, the more powerfully will it send forth its arrows, and so, the more they are trodden upon, the more mighty will they become in the cause of truth against error.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Since neither of the major US political parties are truly (i.e. small-government) conservative, it might be time to start a new political party - GET OFFA MY LAWN!

The preliminary platform is:

You want to tax me for the bribes you’re offering people to vote for you? GET OFFA MY LAWN!

You want to impose limits on the kinds of food I eat, based on junk science? GET OFFA MY LAWN!

You want to drag the freest and most prosperous society in human history back to the Stone Age because some wacko claims we’re going to burn the planet to a crisp and drown those cuddly polar bears? GET OFFA MY LAWN!

You want to kill me and everyone else who doesn’t share your belief in the holiness of a meteorite in Mecca? GET OFFA MY LAWN!

...it's difficult to say on which side of the good-evil line the company's China resolution falls. Brin seems at peace with how it all turned out.

Talking about his decisions and the values he holds most dear, Brin chooses his language carefully, but one word he repeatedly comes back to is "useful."

If Brin's code of good and evil permits the company to negotiate with sovereign governments and allows for some legal meddling from unpopular religions, there is no wiggle room - no gray area whatsoever - when it comes to those who attempt to subvert the power of Google to their own commercial ends. One thing Brin is sure of: On the side of evil lies trickery.

The fact that Google accepts advertising for adult content sites is an intriguing commentary on Brin's morality: Cigarettes and booze are evil; porn is not. It's a policy that would become progressively harder to defend were Google to go public.

What if an influential group of politically active netizens makes a rousing case for boycotting Google on the grounds that it is anti-free speech and in cahoots with repressive governments? How long can a hugely powerful company that plays its decisions so close to the vest and refuses to justify itself publicly count on the devotion of the average information-hungry Web user?

It's inevitable that a company of Google's size and influence will have to compromise on purity.

Our religion is to be an everyday religion — a religion for the kitchen as well as for the parlor, a religion for the rolling pin, and the jack-towel, quite as much as for the pulpit stairs and the Bible — a religion that we can take with us wherever we go. And there is such a thing as glorifying Christ in all the common actions of life. “Servants be obedient to your masters, not only to those who are good and gentle, but to the froward.” You men of business, you need not think that when you are measuring your ribbons, or weighing out your pounds of sugar, or when you are selling, or buying, or going to market, and such like, that you cannot be serving Christ. Why a builder can serve Christ in putting his bricks together, and you can serve Christ in whatever you are called to do with your hands, if you do it as unto the Lord, and not unto men. I remember Mr. Jay once said, that if a shoeblack were a Christian, he could serve Christ in blacking shoes. He ought to black them, he said, better than anyone else in the parish; and then people would say, “Ah, this Christian shoeblack, he is conscientious; he won’t send the boots away with the heels half done, but will do them thoroughly.” And so ought you. You can say of every article you sell, and of everything you do, “I turned that out of my hands in such a manner that it shall defy competition. The man has got his money’s worth; he cannot say I am a rogue or a cheat. There are tricks in many trades, but I will not have anything to do with them; many get money fast by adulteration in trade, but I will not do it, I would sooner be poor than do it.”

...top-of-the-hour radio news with the newsreaders using their Important Concern inflection because G**-forbid the story should speak for itself. Then tomorrow there will be an editorial cartoon that has someone selling apples. Panic. Stupid, useless snowballing hysteria. I’m not worried about the economy at this point; I’m worried what people will do save it. Rebates! Oh, that’s grand. Nothing restores fundamental consumer confidence like shoving money in their hands and yelling SPEND IT! SPEND IT NOW! ON ANYTHING! THROW PILLOWS! STEEPLY DISCOUNTED HD-DVD PLAYERS! BLOWN-GLASS GEEGAWS! TRAILER HITCHES! BUCKETS OF PICKLES! IT DOESN’T MATTER! Or you could tax everyone more so they feel poorer, so they spend less, then wonder why retail sales are down, commercial property is soft, and business tax receipts have cratered.

Just leave it all alone, please. It’s like a cold. You can put it off and cover it up but you’re going to have three miserable shuddering days of congestion and hacking no matter what you do. Unless you take zinc, of course.

That’s it! Spray the markets with zinc!

I’m not an economist, but I’ve noted something interesting. Since we decided that ethanol would be the cure to our “addiction to oil,” we managed to bump up the cost of corn, encourage a shift to corn production, and raise the price of foodstuffs. Which fueled inflation fears. Now that we have increased inflation, we have a fear of a recession, which drives the price of oil down, since demand is expected to slump. The price of gas has gone down a quarter in the last ten days, and it’s idling in the low $2.8x range. As others have noted, the cure for $100 barrel oil is $100 barrel oil. It all works out. There’s a boom and then there’s a bust. Having lived through a few, it’s annoying to hear the same fargin’ end-of-the-world hairshirt orations, especially from those who have spent their entire lives walking around with a bucket of black paint and a brush looking for good news to deface...

We’re not even in a recession, but you’d think the morning sun was about to be blotted out by the rain of money managers hurling themselves out windows. Of course the news is bad. The news is always bad. Even the good news is bad, eventually. If they cured cancer tomorrow it would take a day before analysts worried about the impact on Medicare, what with people living so d*** long and all.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Our God is a spirit, and his hands made the heavens and the earth: well may we worship him, and we need not be disturbed at the sneering question of those who are so insane as to refuse to adore the living God, and yet bow their knees before images of their own carving. We may make an application of all this to the times in which we are now living. The god of modern thought is the creation of the thinker himself, evolved out of his own consciousness, or fashioned according to his own notion of what a god should be.

Now, it is evident that such a being is no God. It is impossible that there should be a God at all except the God of revelation. A god who can be fashioned by our own thoughts is no more a God than the image manufactured or produced by our own hands. The true God must of necessity be his own revealer. It is clearly impossible that a being who can be excogitated and comprehended by the reason of man should be the infinite and incomprehensible God. Their idols are blinded reason and diseased thought, the product of men's muddled brains, and they will come to nought.

"After all, Granite State conservatism is not known for its religious fervor: it prefers small government, low taxes, minimal regulation, the freedom to be left alone by the state. So they're voting for a guy who opposed the Bush tax cuts, and imposed on the nation the most explicit restriction in political speech in years. Better yet, after a freezing first week of January and the snowiest December in a century, New Hampshire conservatives are googoo for a fellow who believes in the scariest of global-warming scenarios and all the big-government solutions necessary to avert them. Well, okay, maybe we can rustle up an alternative to the alternative. Rudy Giuliani's team are betting than after a Huck/McCain seesaw through the early states, by January 29th Florida voters will be ready to unite their party behind a less divisive figure, if by "less divisive figure" you mean a pro-abortion gun-grabbing cross-dresser."

"Don't worry about (Obama's) "Change You Can Believe In" shtick. He doesn't believe in it, and neither should you. He's a fresh face on the same-old-same-old — which is the only change Democrats are looking for."

"the sub-text of both Democrat and Republican messages is essentially that this country is so rich it can afford to be stupid — it can afford to pork up the federal budget; it can afford to put middle-class families on government health care; it can afford to surrender its borders."

"(the Americal electorate is) tired of the artificial and, indeed, creepily coercive secular multiculti pseudo-religion imposed on American grade schools... I think it's actually connected to the jihad, in the sense that radical Islamism is an opportunist enemy which has arisen in the wake of the western world's one-way multiculturalism. In the long run, the relativist mush peddled in our grade schools is a national security threat. But, even in the short term, it's a form of child abuse that cuts off America's next generation from the glories of their inheritance."

Sunday, January 13, 2008

There are many men who are exceedingly well read in heathen mythologies; who can tell you the history of any one of the heathen gods, but who at the same time know very little of the history of Jehovah, and cannot rehearse His mighty acts. In our schools to this day there are books put into the hands of our youth that are by no means fit for them to read — books which contain all kinds of filth, and if not always filth, yet all kinds of fables and vanities, which are simply put into our hands when we are lads, because they happen to be written in Latin and Greek; and, therefore, I suppose it is imagined that we shall all the better recollect the wickedness that is contained in them, by having the trouble of translating them into our own mother tongue.

I would that instead of this, all our youth were made acquainted with the history of the Lord our God. Would that we could give them for classics some books which record what He has done, the victories of His glorious arm, and how He has put to nought the gods of the heathen and cast them down even into the depths. At any rate, the Christian will always find it to be useful to have at hand some history of what God did in the days of yore.

The more you know of God’s attributes, the more you understand of His acts; the more you treasure up of His promises, and the more you fully dive into the depths of His covenant, the more difficult will it become for Satan to tempt you to despondency and despair.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Sen. Harry Reid has a bill in the Senate that will in effect require any blog that reaches more than 500 people and discusses politics must register with the FEC as a lobbyist.

I thought that liberals supported free speech and dissent and all that first amendment stuff. What's going on?...

...as long as I am talking to the people of the United States, whether I seek to influence their vote or not, you have absolutely no right under the Constitution to interfere with or restrict that speech in any way. Let me refresh your memory, sir:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

If this is what the progressives call progress (ed: or change), they need a new dictionary.

p.s. our overgrown government needs to be reminded of some of the other complaints in that wonderful declaration as well (edited for modern circumstances):

(the unelected beltway bureaucracy) has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance

(the left is) abolishing our most valuable Laws (like freedom of speech and gun ownership), and (the distant bureaucracy is) altering fundamentally the Forms of our (state's rights) Governments

(true patriots) have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us

(the leftist-media complex) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless (islamofascist terrorists), whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions

Thursday, January 10, 2008

"There is nothing wrong with your thermostat. Do not attempt to adjust the temperature. We are controlling your power consumption. If we wish to make it hotter, we will turn off your air conditioner. If we wish to make it cooler, we will turn off your heater. For the next millennium, sit quietly and we will control your home temperature. We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your thermostat. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... SACRAMENTO!"

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

one suspects that the word "change" to some politicians means all that's left of your paycheck after they take what they want (follow the link to see the picture):

Every time I hear the word ("change") I'm reminded of a post we did about a year ago that went something like this:

The stock market, despite its current dip, has been hovering near all-time highs and America's 401K's are back.

Unemployment is at 25-year lows.

Taxes are at 20-year lows.

Federal tax revenues are at all-time highs.

The Federal deficit is trending down.

Inflation is in check, hovering at 20-year lows.

Bear in mind that all of the above occurred in the face of the 1999 tech crash, the epidemic of corporate scandals throughout the 90's, and the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on NYC which collectively sucked 24 trillion dollars and 7.8 million jobs out of the US economy even before G. W. Bush had time to unpack his suitcases in the White House. It has also occured despite the recent spike in oil prices and the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Not a single terrorist attack has struck U.S. soil since 9/11/01.

Osama bin Laden is living in a cave, unable to surface for more than a few hours at a time, while most of al Qaeda's leadership is either dead or in custody and cooperating with U.S. intelligence services.

Several major terrorist attacks have been thwarted in the last couple of years by US and British intelligence agencies, including a planned attack involving 10 Jumbo Jets being exploded in mid-air over major U.S. cities in order to celebrate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Iraq appears to be on the road to peace and stability. Afghanistan has been liberated from the Taliban. Some of the luster of Islamo-fascism has faded among Muslims around the world.

Several nations have decided to forego the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Others are cracking down on the movements of terrorists within their borders.

Illegal border crossings into the U.S. have dropped sharply in the past year and continue to drop.

The Supreme Court has seen the addition of two outstanding jurists to the bench in the last couple of years.

What on the above list do the "agents of change" currently running for the presidency propose to undo or alter? What, exactly, do they think should be different?

(preface: To reiterate, despite the blog name, I've never been to Hattiesburg, much less lived there. I'm sure it's a fine city though.)

Since there's (deliberately) no "about me" link on this blog, I decided to try my hand at a "Where I'm From" post. Inspired by a Texas Trifle, who shares quite a bit of the same background as me but is a much better writer.

---

I'm from old Europe, mostly from England via Germany & Scotland. I'm from Texas, starting in Tarrant county and returning twice. I'm from flat land that's white with cotton just before it's white with snow. I'm from oil-filled mesas and pine-filled lowlands. I'm from cities that defend America and from towns that clothe America.

I'm from allergen to allergen and dust to dust. I'm from 1 to 6 feet of rain per year, and from -14 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit, with gusts over 100 mph. I'm from 11-mile-high thunderheads driving 200-foot rust-colored walls ahead of them. I'm from goatheads, tumbleweeds, devils claws and dirt clods. I'm from irrigation ditches, and the motors that fill them six days a week.

I'm from barbershops that have Koken chairs, no music, drowned combs, and a globe full of candy from the Lions Club. I'm from diners where the adults all know each other, the kids get their heads patted, and the paneling has never been replaced. I'm from stores like Perry's & Woolworth's that have affordable non-branded toys and clothes. I'm from highways where passing isn't always possible, but speeding usually is.

I'm from 8-tracks of Floyd Cramer and Danny Davis and The Carpenters. I'm from the Charlies called Daniels, Pride, Rich, and Angels. I'm from Price Is Right, Hazel, and Ultraman. I'm from Hee-Haw vs Star Trek. I'm from Three Dog Night, Ted Nugent, Van Halen (not hagar), Devo, Styx, Boston, and Thin Lizzie. I'm from KLOL, KY99, KTRU, and the old KOMA. I'm from people who remember back when entertainment didn't have to be morally and intellectually offensive.

I'm from panfried porkchops, goatmeat tamales, ranchstyle beans, iceless tea (and the accompanying odd looks), cornbread in castiron, elbow macaroni and government cheese. I'm from Burger King and Dairy Queen, Mr. Burger and Mrs. Bairds, Allsups, Furrs, Toot-n-Totum, the Pandas called Lucky Golden Happy and Szechuan, and the tacos of Bueno, Bell, and Villa. I'm from (some) people who like peppers hotter than habanero.

I'm from church dinners featuring brisket or casseroles, and community suppers featuring kolaches or chili. I'm from six-man football, accompanied by mosquitos, noise, wind, painful seating, cold, wasps, and mud. I'm from hymnals (with occasional shape notes), quiet prayers, and happy doxologys. I'm from offerings in the velvet-lined plate followed by special music every week. I'm from sermons that were about training you right and making sure you didn't get left, rather than hyping you up or casting you down.

...and I'm sure of where I'm going to, but I have no idea what will happen before I get there.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Though I'm not quite ready to officially endorse Fred Thompson for president, there's a lot in this 17-minute message that I agree with, and very little to disagree with.

update: Viewpoint brings up another good point about Fred. "A qualified, conscientious candidate who could otherwise either take the job or leave it, I think, has exactly the kind of attitude toward governance that we should admire in our politicians." (and while you're there, scroll down to read the paragraph that does a good job of "illustrating all at once the arrogance, pomposity, superciliousness, scorn, contempt and sense of superiority many liberals hold for their fellow man.")

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

i had an idea for a post to compare my viewpoints with those of each of the presidential candidates - as they are presented on each of their own websites. my first step was to find a comprehensive list of the candidates. i knew that there were a few more than the ~3 democrats and ~6 republicans who usually get any news coverage, :